Comments

While the title of this post has an interesting premise, the article itself is too long and never actually seems to say anything. Personally, I'd like to see a better discussion of this which is more to the point of the title.

I liked the subtle way Michael crafted his message "Google's war on 'paid links' is like nailing diarrhea to the wall, and SEOs adhering this quixotic policy are well advised to discover the anatomy of the real Web".

This is not the first time that someone has intimated that all "SEO" links are paid links. The fact that it happened at some secret meeting of SEO personalities might add some semblance of intrigue I suppose, but it doesn't make it a new idea.

And frankly, I think that the entire topic is sort of a waste of time in that at the end of the day, all's fair in love and SEO.

Even traditional "paid links" fly under Google's radar more often than not, so what's the point of arguing the semantics of what really qualifies as a "paid" link. Virtually all of them (traditional or not) "work" since at the end of the day Google - like the DEA - only seems to put a very minor dent in the trafficking that's going on out there (paid links, not drugs, but you get the picture).

What's more important, in my opinion, is thinking about things like the difference in residual costs (including opportunity costs) and ROI between a traditional paid link and all other forms.

I don't think the point is whether that's a new idea or not. I mean, each and every somewhat savvy SEO not only considers Google's policy on paid links selfish and evil, but knows enough safe ways to sail around it. The point is, that Google enforcing such a policy, just because for years they weren't capable to develop algos that judge links for their purposes somewhat properly, forces this planet's webmasters to invest man years of unpaid work just to please the almighty Google. It's about time for Google to admit that they failed, and to apologize for their FUD and all the hassles. Of course they won't do the right thing in this case, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to nudge them every once in a while.

I did not read the article because of what Jill said so I will just comment on the title. I don't agree or least I will say it is not always true. It all depends on your definition of a paid link. I don't think Google would say that you are supposed to put up a website and never do anything to promote it. As a link builder it is my job to raise awareness. Now if I get paid and I go put a bunch of links on sites that I have control over or influence over that is a paid link for sure. I think some of white hat link building is paid for. Any time a link is acquired and it is not achieved based on the merit of the site it is linking to, then yes it is paid for and goes against Google rules. Now if I contact a site and then they write an article on their own because they like my client’s site so much then that is not paid for. If I write an article for my client that is really good and interesting and then point it out to a bunch of people and they link to it and others link to it, then that is not paid either. The problem is that there is no way for Google to know intention. This is the reason that Google will never be able to stop good spammers is that they can create links that look just like they were acquired by legitimate means. Google cannot detect why a link was put up.

While I agree that I padded out the article with warnings and clarifications in order to minimize upsetting the people who attended the meeting, that article is not THAT long (and you can actually read the meat of it in the first few paragraphs anyway).

Is it news? No. I felt it was worth saying *something* because a business decision was made on the basis of the point of view that I don't agree with. The business decision did not affect me personally -- I just felt it was the wrong decision.

For what it's worth -- I finally went through the process of creating a Sphinn account. The signup form picked my picture (from somewhere -- SearchEngineLand maybe?) but forced me to save it to disk and upload it again. Someone might want to streamline that process.